April 18, 2007

Plugging Away

Wow! I'm barely even a weekend blogger lately.

Last weekend my parents were in town. Of course, I ditched school for a day to hang out with them. It was a blast just hanging out by myself with them. When I go to their house to visit, I rarely even have time alone with them both at the same time. In recent years, visits have been short, and just because I have time off doesn't mean anyone else does. So what did we do while they were in town? Not much. I'd say our big event was hitting yard sales on Saturday morning. We just relaxed and visited.

Some of my students had cause to celebrate this week because we finished the yearbook! Wahoo! I'm slightly disappointed in myself because we did not make deadline--there's really no reason why--in the big picture, anyway. When I think back to the days when I first starting doing yearbook...it was all on paper and we sent our layout plans and copy to the plant and they designed it. Now it's so much easier! It's all digital, and we actually build the book online.

The celebration, by the way, was a little odd. Everyone brought food and we ended up with about 8 bags of chips, tons of candy, soda, and a big green salad. Hilarious!

We've been doing a balancing act of learning about public speaking and poetry. Actually, my department is organizing a poetry slam, so I'm hoping that many of my students will indeed combine these two topics and participate. So far I have about 5 students who are excited about the slam. Yea, wow. Five. Even after I presented them with some wonderful examples, students are interested in learning more about slam, but are still not too excited to give it a shot--or even simply reciting some of their own poems. Oh well. Can't have everything. Yet. We still have time.

Our school has another event coming up in a few weeks. The Magnet Schools of America conference is here in Las Vegas, and part of the conference includes school tours. We are also including our annual Technology Showcase on that same day. (The Showcase is when we invite everyone and anyone to come check out how we use technology. I've never actually had anyone come to my room, even last year when I was told there'd be people stopping by.) So, apparently we'll have people in and out of our school observing--and judging. Sorry, that's the cynical side shining. Admin is super-stressed about this visitor day. I don't know why. We'll do what we do, and people can take it or leave it.

Man...I can't believe I actually have to teach for one day, and my students will be stunned that they must work and be able to tell people on what they are working. Gaaaaawwwwwwwd! What a bummer! I don't know what admin is worried about. We'll rock.